


A Cloak of Moonlight

by Gehayi



Category: 12 Dancing Princesses (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Gen, New Year's Resolutions, POV Female Character, POV Multiple, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 17:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/pseuds/Gehayi
Summary: Have you ever wondered why the princesses were dancing, or how they felt about it? Wonder no more. NYR 2019.
Relationships: Eldest Princess/Old Soldier (12 Dancing Princesses)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 92
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2019





	A Cloak of Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprl1199](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/gifts).

> **Prompt:** I've always loved this fairytale. Something about the concept is so eerie (dark magic dance parties! a mystical land of jeweled and metallic trees accessible through a hidden passage!), it's one that tends to linger. If you take this prompt, please do whatever you'd like based upon the original. Modern take, fusion with another fandom, remix: any of it would be fantastic. Give your creativity reign!

A king who was a fool once hunted in a fairy grotto.

Some may be surprised that the tale, by rights, begins with a king and not the twelve princesses, for the princesses were the most valorous. But they would not have had to be if not for the king who became their father. Listen. This is why they came to dance.

He was young in those days--scarce twenty-five, having been king for a scant three years. His hair and neatly clipped beard were the hue of chestnut wood, and his eyes were hazel. He was lean rather than muscular, a good rider, an expert hunter, overgenerous with his gifts and with too heavy a hand when it came to pouring wine. It was said of him, and truly, that he liked whatever he looked upon, and whatever he liked, he deemed to be his by right.

He hunted much in those days, for the land was prosperous and at peace, and ruling involved more paperwork and more tedium than he could bear. _Best_, he thought, _to let the clerks fuss with their forms and their tax rolls; it is no business of mine_. And since he had little else to occupy himself, he invented challenging hunts: stoats, polecats, elks, wild boars, and walruses. When this palled, he imported lions from the lands south of Egypt and tigers from India. After these beasts were all dead (and his councilors had all protested, loudly and in open court, that he could not afford to buy even one elephant, let alone a herd), he began hunting and tracking mythical beasts--the perilous water spirits known as nixes, the ugly and unfriendly mountain trolls (many of whom were magicians and all of whom were rich)...even, on one occasion, a young sea-dragon, though that particular hunt ended in failure, which put the king in a bad temper for a week. Then he forgot about it, or said he did.

But the sea-dragon child did not forget. She swam swiftly home to her mother, and her sea-dragon mother, who was a lady-in-waiting, whispered to the Sea Queen the tale of the cruel king who had hunted her daughter, and the Sea Queen told her niece, the Fairy Queen, when next they met. 

The Fairy Queen had already heard enough and more about this king from the families of nixes and trolls killed in his hunts, and had been debating what to do about him. Nevertheless, the news that he'd hunted a mere child--and the child of her aunt's vassal, at that!--shocked her. 

"I will deal with him at the next full moon," she grimly told her aunt, "for his offenses are too great to be borne any longer. The hunter will become the hunted, if I have aught to say about it."

Of course, simply decreeing this did not make it so. The Fairy Queen knew she would need a skilled mage and a swift shapeshifter, and so she sought among her people for the strongest and the swiftest. At last, three days before the full moon, she found the best of the best, an enchantress called Therizo and her lover, Ayal. Both were young, or at least young-seeming, and were at the zenith of their powers.

And so the Fairy Queen summoned them to a grotto filled with living trees of metal and jewels. Blossoms of sapphire adorned the grove of silver trees, flowers of rubies bloomed upon branches of the trees of gold, and glittering petals of emeralds graced the arbors of diamond. Past the grove of diamond trees lay a lake filled with rare beasts that sang and fish that prophesied. In the center of the lake was an island, and on that island was a pavilion as large and as grand as a palace. And there, in the grand hall, as mortal musicians played the finest music of their lives while wondering how they would ever do so again, the Fairy Queen met Therizo and Ayal, giving them their instructions. 

"You must spend the next three days and three nights in the form of a swift white stag with antlers of diamond," she told Ayal, and then to Therizo said, "And you must ensure that all who see this stag will believe that it will grant them their heart's dearest wish. But no one must catch him, however hard they try, so lend your strength to his speed, if there is need." 

She turned back to Ayal. "And on the day of the full moon, the king must see you amongst the trees in the forest not far from his palace. He will long to follow you then, and will call for his horses and hounds and huntsmen. You must lead them all a merry chase until all of the hounds have been outpaced, all of the huntsmen have turned back, and even the king's own gelding has halted from sheer exhaustion and the king has dismounted to pursue you on foot. Transform the king into whatever form you wish"--this with a nod to Therizo--"and bring him to me for judgment." 

She gazed sternly at them both. "Do not fail me."

Therizo and Ayal did as they were bade. Hither and yon the white stag raced, up hill and down dale, east of the sun and west of the moon, beyond the north wind itself. And all who saw it knew that the stag could grant their dearest wish. Not a few tried to capture it, thinking that it would surely grant this wish in exchange for its freedom. But the stag was swifter than a wave, swifter than the wind that brushes the foam from the wave, swifter than thought itself. Yet fast as the stag was, the tales and rumors about it ran even faster, until, by the day of the full moon, there was not a person in the kingdom who, thanks to Therizo's magic, had not heard of it, from the oldest inhabitant of the land to the child born an hour before. And the king, who had heard more than anyone, burned to catch the stag and compel it to grant his dearest wish--though the king could not have told a living soul what that wish was.

And oh, that was a hunt, for the stag never paused for water or rested from dawn to dusk. As the day passed, the hounds collapsed, one by one, and the king's fellow hunters, who saw the state that the dogs and their own horses were in, one by one returned to the palace. The king's horse trotted on as long as he could, but at last had to halt mid-step, trembling, while the king dismounted and pushed forward without giving the animal who had given strength and health and all but life itself for his master's pleasure so much as a backward glance. 

The horse's courage and determination pleased Ayal so much that he, in the language of shapeshifters, which is inaudible to mortals, asked Therizo if she would reward him. And Therizo, who was disguised as a wren, asked the horse what he would like. The horse asked for legs and a body that would be strong, would never tire, and would outpace the wind. That is how the winged horses that neither sicken nor die of old age once they reach adulthood came to dwell in the king's land, and it is also why none of the royal family can catch, own, or ride one.

The king, however, did not notice the transformation of his steed; he had eyes only for the stag.

On and on the stag (and his companion, who had changed from wren to owl) led the king, until they were very close to the Queen's Grotto. The moon was skimming close to the horizon as the king shot his last iron-tipped arrow. The stag evaded it with ease, leaping into the moonlight. The king, unwilling to be cheated (as he thought ) of his wish, leapt after him--and, unseen, an owl followed.

But once he was within the grotto, the king all but forgot about the stag. Or rather, he felt that the stag had granted him his dearest wish by bringing him hither, for everywhere he looked, he saw wealth unimaginable. Silver and gold and diamond trees, singing beasts that could be sold to other kingdoms--his kingdom would be the richest in the world, and it was all because of the stag! What more could it give him?

It did not occur to him that a grotto tended like a favorite garden most likely belonged to someone else. Even if it had, he would not have realized that he had no right to the grotto, for was he not king? And did not all land in the kingdom belong to him?

Frogs croaked reprimands at him, and salmon predicted ill-luck if he would not turn back. But the king heard none of it, intent only upon his greedy dreams.

Therizo and Ayal had by now abandoned their animal forms in favor of their more usual ones of maiden and man and were whispering to each other in some confusion. What ailed the king? And what were they to do now?

It was their misfortune that their forms were beautiful to behold--and that the king, on seeing Therizo, immediately wanted her for his own. 

Ayal saw the king reaching for Therizo before she did. Instantly, he transformed into the white stag with the diamond antlers, for antlers were sharp and diamond was hard and both together made a pair of fearsome weapons. And antlers could be wielded from more than a man's arm's length, which was all the better from Ayal's point of view, though the king had spent all his arrows and spears that day and surely had no weapons left save his hands and feet.

And Ayal was half right. The king had nothing left that he used for hunting. But he still bore one weapon at his hip--a steel dagger in case anyone attacked him. 

Steel. That is, purified iron.

And right now, someone was attacking the king.

Ayal fought valiantly, make no mistake. He was a seasoned warrior and the best of the shapeshifters and his diamond antlers left wounds that would keep the king from hunting ever again. But when Ayal lowered his head for another strike, the king in desperation buried the dagger in the stag's neck.

Wailing and wishing she could weep, Therizo gripped her dying lover as he shifted from stag to his true form...which in no way resembled anything human.

The king murmured to Therizo, beseeching her to come away from that monster, for he had saved her and surely, surely the spell was broken It was all nonsense to Therizo, for the grotto seemed to be filled with the roar of a storm wind, and all the color had leached from the world. 

"The hunter has won," said a displeased voice behind her. "And what am I to tell my aunt now?"

Therizo thought of a thousand protests--that the king had not wanted to follow them once he entered the grotto, that they had not known of the dagger's existence, that they had not dreamed that the king would espy them and think her in need of rescue. In the end, however, she said nothing. They _had_ failed, and she liked that no better than the Fairy Queen did.

"What do you wish me to do?" she asked, her voice hollow, sick, and empty. She almost expected the king to react to her words in bafflement. It was something of a relief when he remained as mute and as still as a statue.

"You may speak aloud," said the Fairy Queen, a touch of pity threading through her audible displeasure. "He will see and hear nothing until I will it again.

"As for what I want," she added, "I would have my grotto back, filled with gifts and tributes from him...or those of his blood. And that will not be easy, for he has claimed this place with all his heart. Even if I hide the knowledge of its existence from him, his lust to keep it will remain."

The Fairy Queen stepped in front of Therizo and gazed at her with disturbing eyes that saw the depths of each and every world. "What would _you_ have?"

"Ayal." There could be no other answer.

"He is dead," the Fairy Queen replied. "Fae shapeshifters have spirits, if not souls--they are mortal enough for that much--but Death's price for freeing his spirit and placing him in a new body is high. And there is no guarantee that he will love you again even if he lives; he will recall nothing of the past, and he will have to rebuild his magic and power from next to nothing. Choose something else."

But Therizo refused. Ayal was what she wanted, she said, and Ayal she meant to have, despite the king and his knife.

"Are you certain?" asked the Fairy Queen. "It will take twice thirteen years, and you must find twelve others who are willing to help." 

She did not bother to say why, as both of them knew the reason. Fairies so rarely died that they did not even consider themselves mortal. Only those who were slain by iron, sun, or salt suffered that indignity, and they were deemed most unfortunate, for their spirits shattered into twelve different parts at death. Why twelve, no one knew. Some said it was a magic number; others, that the twelve aspects were fragments of the dead fairy's mind or emotions. Whatever the reason, Death had to be appeased with a ritual, preferably one of great beauty, and the dozen fragments had to work together in this ritual so that they might be reunited again as one being. It was a hard, delicate task that demanded much of the ritual master and their twelve allies, and was so seldom accomplished that the fae word for the ritual meant "vain-hope."

As the Fairy Queen spoke of the difficulty, Therizo knew what she must do. Though her mind recoiled from it, she knew there was no other choice. Quickly she told the Queen her plan, and at last the Queen nodded. 

"It would pay for your errors and for his life," she admitted. "But this will be difficult for you. Beyond difficult. Are you certain?"

From a faithful vassal and grieving lover, there could be only one answer. 

As Therizo assented, the Fairy Queen picked up Ayal's body. With a word, she gave Therizo a stern look and then faded away.

And as she did so, the king came back to life (or so it seemed to Therizo) and began telling her yet again to fear nothing, for he had saved her and now she would be his queen. Therizo sighed at the prospect.

"Thirteen years we will be wed," she said, "and twelve fair children, clever and brave and faithful, shall I bear. But do not hope for more. Do you agree?" 

The king, half-bewitched by Therizo's beauty, would have agreed, in that moment, that he was standing on the sky and that the ground was stretched above him. He nodded eagerly, convinced that they would be wed not merely for thirteen years but thirteen times thirteen and that all their sons (for of course all of them would be sons, as they would be brave) would be the envy of every king and emperor…

...and as he dreamed of his glorious future with his lovely queen by his side, Therizo carefully guided him out of the grotto back into the world of men.

***

The king and Therizo were wed almost at once, to the consternation of half the court. Not that this mattered, for the king was pleased with his lady and swore that he was in love, and everyone presumed that she loved him as well. After all, he was a young and handsome king, and he had saved her from a hideous monster. How could she not love him?

Once wed and crowned, however, the new queen proved to be a retiring creature. She spent much of her time in her room, either weaving and sewing multitudes of ball gowns of varying shapes and sizes or playing tunes--some dashing, some serene--on her dulcimer. Little changed once she started bearing her immense family of daughters, save that she taught them all how to dance as soon as they could walk, and so gracefully that a cloud looked clumsy beside them.

However, the last things she made while queen were neither children nor gowns, but a construct and a cloak made of moonlight. When she wore the cloak during the day, she seemed to fade to a flickering shadow which could not possibly be there; when any of the moon was visible, neither she nor the cloak could be seen, but the moonlight seemed to gleam with an added luster; and when the moon was new, set, or not yet risen, she was both invisible and transparent. It was her favorite garment, for all no one save herself knew of it (and would have been sick with terror at how easily the queen could have found out their secrets, had they known).

On the day that the youngest princess was born, the queen made the construct, weaving it of sunlight and moonlight, night's shadow and rain. It looked like a much frailer version of the queen whose face was soaked with sweat and streaked with tears, as if a twelfth childbirth had been too much to endure.

Did she weep at leaving her children? No, for she was fae, and fairies cannot weep. But that does not mean she did not want to.

Did she at least regret leaving her husband? In truth, no. As she left the construct behind to be waked and buried, she felt no more than a pang of relief at abandoning the bed and palace of her beloved's murderer. There was also, perhaps, a sliver of joy, for she had spent thirteen years preparing her daughters to dance, so half the death-price for Ayal had been paid.

Now it was up to her daughters...and the temptation of curiosity.

So Therizo left the palace concealed by her cloak of moonlight, and none knowingly saw the queen again. Oh, an old woman in a ragged white cloak soon appeared in a cottage in the birch wood to the west, and the rumor soon got about that she was a witch, though a kindly one...but no one saw anything of the shy young queen in her features or her bearing. 

Why should they? She was a fairy and a mage, after all. Neither her present nor her past faces were her true one.

***

On the night of the supposed queen's wake, the eldest princess, who was then twelve, arose from troubled slumber, feeling as if someone or something had been whispering to her to go to her mother's room, where a wondrous secret lay hidden.

Of course her mother had been whispering this, using a cantrip that carried whispers through forests and across mountains. But the eldest princess did not know this. She thought it only a particularly vivid dream...though not one that she could help indulging. After all, what harm could it do if she peered into her mother's room?

And there, lit by a shaft of moonlight, was a trap door the young princess had never seen before.

It did not occur to her until much later that the moon had been new that night and therefore could not have illuminated the trap door.

What she did notice was that there was a key in the lock and that the door opened silently and with ease. And once it was open...well, the princess was unnerved by the sight of the yawning black maw at her feet, but she could not bring herself to close the trap door and forget about it. She had to know what lay at the bottom, even if it meant her death. 

And so she lit a lantern--though again, she could not recall the flint or the lantern being in her mother's room before--and crept down, down, down the stairs until she stood in the Fairy Queen's Grotto. 

The princess gazed about her, drinking in the sights as if she had thirsted for them all her life.

As she walked through the rippling grass, it shifted into colors for which she had no name. She beheld firebirds like living comets, winging their way across a sky filled with spinning stars--stars that were a thousand times closer than any she had seen before. Conifers that looked like the finest music sounds brushed her nose with haunting perfumes from a dozen alien worlds. Goblins tattooed with indigo and ash gaped at her from behind shrubs and bushes. And, as she drew nearer to the lake, a baby goose hatched from a barnacle tree floating in the water. 

She was surprised to find a dock in the lake--and at the dock, a rowboat with a finely garbed young prince of her own age gripping the oars.

"Please get in," he said to her. "For there is little time and much to explain, and you must begin as you mean to go on."

The princess, who was nearly incandescent with curiosity, hurriedly got in the boat.

"There are twelve of us," said the prince as he rowed with all his might, "though I am the only one who can travel here at the moment. The others will arrive as your sisters do...if you decide to return."

The princess asked--nay, fairly demanded--to know where they were and why only this prince could journey here for now. This did not seem quite fair to her.

"Fair?" said the prince, his mouth twisting in a grimace. "No, it is not. But we are prisoners in a far, dark country--yes, even I, for I am only let out at night, and I cannot set foot on the dock. And even if I could escape, I have no desire to leave my fellow prisoners behind; we have been through too much together.

"As to where we are," he added, "This is the Fairy Queen's Grotto, which your father defiled some thirteen years hence when he slew an innocent that your mother loved, thinking it a monster and her a damsel in need of rescuing." Snorting at the absurdity of this, the prince explained that the princess's mother and the "monster" had been of fairy blood, though the princess's father had never known.

"But what has this to do with me?" asked the princess, striving not to think of her father cruelly wounding her mother without realizing it or of her mother not being human.

For a few moments, there was no sound save the whisper of the oar blades gliding through the water. Then the prince said softly, "There is a tale, is there not, of a musician whose wife died on their wedding day, and his journey to the Land of the Dead to persuade the gods to let her return?"

"Orpheus and Eurydice," replied the eldest princess. "But--Orpheus was still alive! My mother just died! Shouldn't she be with her monster now? And happy?"

The prince sighed. "Death demands sacrifices for resurrection," he said. "For your mother, the sacrifice was her marriage--first to wed a mortal most hateful to her, and then to give it up, along with her home, her wealth, her queenship...and her beloved children. 

"She still breathes. But until the spell on my siblings and me is broken, she cannot see you or any of your sisters. The Fairy Queen will not permit it when one of her servants lies pointlessly dead, the wrong unavenged." 

The princess pondered this for some time. "What do my sisters and I have to sacrifice?" she asked at last in a small voice. 

"Time and strength," said the prince, "and a delay of marriage for most of you. For thirteen years and a day the twelve of you must remain in your father's palace, and every night but this one"--a reproving glance raked her, and the princess became blushingly conscious of her nightgown and bedroom slippers--"you must dress yourselves a gown or slippers made by your mother, walk through the three groves to the dock, seat yourselves in the rowboat of your dancing partner, and when you arrive at the island in the middle of the lake, dance in the pavilion until dawn."

This did not seem a particularly hard sacrifice to the princess. She said so.

"Then you have not thought about it," said the prince. "You must dance if you are weak or busy or ill, for Death accepts no excuses. If there is a festival that night or you are being courted, you must still slip away and dance for hours without stopping. If you are punished for dancing, you must not let this stop you; if your father sends you away to a distant palace--no matter where!--you must contrive to return before moonrise that same day. For the trap door in your mother's chambers is the only remaining gate to the grotto. And you cannot tell the sister next to you in age until she reaches her twelfth birthday. And the two of you cannot tell the third until she is twelve. And so on. 

"Most of all, you cannot tell your father until the spell is broken--for while he no longer recalls his crimes against the fairy folk, save in dreams, he would fear for his children the instant he heard the truth, sending you to the other ends of the earth and sealing up the trap door forever. And all the work that your mother and your sisters and you did up until then would have have been for nothing. We would be trapped in Death's domain for all time, and beyond. The Fairy Queen would be...deeply displeased to permanently lose a member of her court to another kingdom, even one as ancient as Death's. She would not forgive your kingdom. Or your father. Or you.

"And your mother would grieve forever." He glanced at the eldest princess. "She is a mage as well as a queen. Mages and queens do not always grieve in peaceful silence.

"Think on it. It will not be easy. And you cannot promise lightly."

The eldest princess pondered this for the remainder of the boat ride, and indeed for the rest of the night as she danced with the prince. Thanks in part to the dancing lessons she had received from her mother and in part to her fairy heritage, she acquitted herself well on the dance floor, so much so that the prospect of doing this for thirteen more years did not seem onerous. On the boat ride back, she told the prince that she would be back the next night, and the next, and so on, until the spell on him and his siblings was broken.

"But tell me, please," she added. "You're my mother's monster, aren't you?"

For the first time, the prince laughed, albeit a bit ruefully. "No. But I am part of that monster." He shrugged at the surprise in the princess's face. "My siblings and I were one being once. Now we are many. If you and your sisters keep faith, we may someday be one again."

"We'll keep faith," the princess insisted stoutly. "We're _princesses_."

The prince only shook his head. "Child," he said--and how strange that sounded to the princess's ears, coming from the lips of a boy who seemed no more than twelve--"your title is not the pledge of honor that you think. This all came to pass because of a man who thought he had the right to kill as he pleased for his entertainment. And that man was and is a king."

***

Spring passed, then summer, and then autumn, and the princess learned just how difficult the ritual was. No matter how weary or sick or hungry or burdened with lessons she was, at night she had to put all of that aside and dance skillfully and happily for Death. Sometimes she sensed otherworldly forces gazing at her as she and the prince danced. Death? The Fairy Queen? Her own mother? The eldest princess did not know, and she was afraid to give offense by asking.

She also had to learn to get along on little sleep, dozing from dawn to mid-morning and then arising and pretending that she was thoroughly rested. She did not consider going back on her promise, but there were times when she could have slept for a month and been glad of it.

Harder still was keeping her nightly adventures secret from her sisters. There were so many things she longed to tell them about the grotto, and each night, it seemed, she spied some new beast, bird, fish, or tree, all odd beyond belief and all magical. It seemed wrong not to tell them.

Hardest of all was the knowledge that her mother was alive somewhere in the world and yet had chosen to leave her children for the sake of someone who was dead. She did not think that she would ever forgive her mother for this--though the prince, who often intuited what she did not say, had told her that this, too, was part of the payment.

"The love of her children? That's too much!"

The prince had sighed patiently at this. "It's a _sacrifice_. Do you think Death would appreciate a sacrifice that isn't worth anything?"

New Year's Day came, and with it the birthday of the second princess. That night, for the first time, one of the eldest princess's sisters spied her creeping from bed to their mother's old chambers. The eldest princess explained nothing when the second princess burst into the chambers demanding to know what was going on.

"Put these on," she said, handing her sister a gown of rich, vibrant blue embroidered with golden pineapples, along with matching slippers. "And then I'll do your hair. We're going to a party."

She didn't get a chance to tell the second princess how things stood once they were in the grotto, either; her sister was so intent on drinking in everything (_as I did almost a year ago_, the eldest princess thought) that letting her absorb the beauty and strangeness seemed wiser than speaking. And at the dock, two rowboats were waiting, not just one. The new boat contained a merry-faced girl dressed in garb identical to that of the eldest's partner.

"Hello!" she greeted the second princess. "Oh, I'm so glad you're here at last. I hope we'll have fun. And I'll tell you all about the grotto while we dance."

The second princess beamed at this, and sprang into the boat without a moment of hesitation.

"Don't worry," said the prince as the eldest princess entered the boat carefully, trying not to tip it over. "My...sister, I suppose I must say...will explain everything to her. There is no need to fear."

"She doesn't act much like you."

"Of course not. Each of us is part of another person...but not the _same_ part." He smiled faintly. "I think of her as the Merry Heart. She possesses the joy that I do not."

The eldest princess contemplated the prince for a moment. No, he was not jovial, but he had been just and had wanted her full understanding, despite knowing that once she knew the truth, she could say no and leave him trapped forever. She appreciated that. She suspected her sister would hear a much more light-hearted version of what was needful--though no less true.

"She'll have many questions once you're home," the prince added, nodding toward the other rowboat. "But you've been longing to talk about this, haven't you?"

And the prince was right. The second princess did have many questions, so many that the eldest princess wondered how she could keep them all inside of her without bursting. But while they had to keep from telling their sisters (and oh, how they both longed to!) and their father, things were easier now, for neither of them had to bear the secret alone.

And so it went on. Every nine or ten or eleven months another sister would have a birthday and would see her older sisters slipping away (first from their bedchamber down the hall, and then, after the third and boldest sister asked their father if they might all move into their mother's old chambers, from their beds). Each one dressed up in a gown and slippers their mother had made; each met a prince of temperament similar to herself; each was told how matters stood, and that they must dance for a number of years and a day. And all, from the one who longed to be a pirate to the most doleful, from the one who longed to study the stars to the one who asked her prince how to heal exhausted, blistered feet, chose to save the broken fairy for whom their mother and sisters had already sacrificed so much.

Then, the day after the seventh sister's twelfth birthday, ill luck befell the princesses. The servants found a chamber fairly strewn with worn-out shoes. 

***

This was no one's fault. It had been a most energetic dance that night, and the princesses had barely been able to change from their gowns to nightdresses before falling into bed. None of them had been conscious enough to do what each had always done before--concealing the ruined slippers behind wardrobes, in sacks, or under desks. They weren't awake enough to even consider what anyone would think once they saw the slippers.

But one maid with sharp eyes saw the damage to seven pairs of slippers, gathered them all, and brought them to the head chambermaid, asking if she (the maid) should mend them. The chambermaid went to the housekeeper, asking if the princesses had gone to a ball the night before. The housekeeper sought out the seneschal of the castle, inquiring as to where the princesses were dancing for so long that they ruined their footwear. And the seneschal, who knew of no suitors and no invitations to dances, not to mention no one within two hundred miles holding a formal ball, spoke to the king.

The king still did not recall what he had done in his misspent youth. But as the seneschal spoke, the king felt aches in long-healed wounds in his right arm and left leg. And when gazing at the remnants of the slippers, for an unsettling second, he seemed to see a white shape crowned with diamond charging at him.

Not knowing what he feared or why, the king had the guards search the princesses' bedchamber. But whether because of magic or the girls' own precautions, they found not a single dancing slipper or ball gown. And when the guards rolled up the rug the older princesses had used to cover the trap door, they saw and felt nothing but a solid marble floor. 

The king questioned the princesses next. But the youngest five knew nothing, and the oldest six, unwilling to have all their work undone, said that they had done nothing to shame their blood or the crown. The seventh whimpered that her elder sisters had thrown her a private birthday party after the younger ones had fallen fast asleep, and where was the harm in that?

So began an undeclared war between the princesses and the king.

Extra guards were placed outside their bedchamber, and new ones were put inside it. Their rooms were changed without warning. Their favorite possessions were confiscated as punishment. They were given dull and time-consuming lessons to occupy their days. They were forbidden to speak to one another. For one bleak week, they had to subsist on bread and water.

And all of it was in vain. Seven, then eight, and then nine princesses continued to dance, night after night. And every dawn, the ruined slippers lay beside their beds.

At last the king ceased all punishments. He even let them move back into their mother's old chambers. For a moment, the princesses dared to hope that it was all over and that they could complete their task in peace.

Which was when the king announced that anyone who could guard the princesses for three days and learn where they went every night would win half the kingdom, the princess of their choice, and the rest of the kingdom when he died. But anyone who tried and failed would be put to death.

He was, as has been stated, a fool who felt that he deserved to have whatever he wanted. And right now, he wanted to know his daughters' secret. That they were doing nothing worse than wear out their shoes was irrelevant. They were _his_ daughters. _His_ possessions. How dare they keep secrets from him?

The princesses, unsurprisingly, were less than pleased.

"If we don't stop," said the eighth princess, a tender-hearted sort who befriended every beast, bird, and reptile in the vicinity of the palace, "people will die."

"If we _do_ stop," the eldest princess retorted, "the ritual fails, our mother's heart breaks, and we and the kingdom incur the wrath of the Fairy Queen. War and pestilence would be the least of it. Thousands would die. Hundreds of thousands. Not just a handful of foolhardy princes and nobles who covet an easy path to a throne."

"We can't just let them die!"

"We could drug them," suggested the sixth princess, who loved cooking and would have been happier as a baker's daughter. "Something in their dessert, maybe. Or their wine."

"In the mulled wine," replied the third. "If they taste anything, they'll assume that it's just a pinch too much of this spice or that. And they won't complain, for fear of giving offense. And once they fail three times, we'll have the servants smuggle them out. They won't tell Father for fear of offending him."

And that was the pattern for the next year and a half. Princes, dukes, marquesses and earls all sought the princesses' secret; all were drugged; and all failed to learn a thing. Matters might well have gone on that way if not for the duke's son who, after his fortuitous escape, ran to the king with news that he knew the princesses' secret. It was all taradiddle--a nonsense tale of highwaymen lovers creeping into the palace night after night--and it was easily disproven. But the king, feeling that he could be quite certain that the duke's son had tried and failed, had him executed a scant hour after the slander was proved false.

A blood-stained time followed, for the princesses no longer felt that they could rely on the honor of their noble suitors. The suitors were still drugged, for the princesses could not afford to have their secret discovered. But now they no longer tried to save the youths, though some still pitied them. Generosity had bought them nothing but lies and risk to their entire nation. They could not afford to let this happen again. 

As the eleventh princess's birthday came and went, only one thought was in each of the dancing princess's minds: _Let this end soon._

Then, shortly after the twelfth princess's birthday--she had been a seven-month babe, and breech in the bargain--the prince-partner of the eldest princess said with a smile, "The end draws near. We can feel the fetters begin to break."

The eldest princess did not answer. She had been dancing for more than half her life now, and could scarcely picture a world without it.

"It is true. Your mother has sent word. The last suitor approaches. You'll know him by the slipper he bears in one hand and the three branches in the other. When you see those tokens, you will know that the spell is broken, and your task is done."

"_When?_" The princess and her sisters had long given up trying to calculate when their mother's thirteen years had begun. "Before her wedding" was all they could be certain of. And without that precise date, none of them could calculate when their thirteen years and a day would be over and done. She herself had expected it to end three weeks before on the youngest princess's birthday--and had been grievously disappointed.

"Soon," was all that the prince would say. 

That did not satisfy the princess. "All times are 'soon' here," she whispered rebelliously before disembarking from the boat and taking her dance partner's arm as she had done countless times before.

***

Now, while the princesses had been laboring year after year, dancing for Death and the Fairy Queen, a witch who had once been queen of the land had not been idle. She had been mightily displeased by the lie the duke's son had told about her daughters, and since then any suitor with dishonest or foul intentions had found his path twisting and turning until the next palace he saw was his own. (She could do little to aid the well-meaning but foolish ones. Even if the path returned them to the drawbridge in front of their own castle, they never seemed to take the hint.)

But as she tried to guard her daughters from evil suitors and attempted to protect the foolish ones from their own folly, Therizo also sought a man with courage and shrewdness who would deal honorably with them and would not look down on them once he knew their secret.

Finding such a man proved surprisingly difficult. At times, Therizo despaired. Perhaps Death had rejected the ritual and meant to keep Ayal, fractured as he was. Perhaps the sacrifices of her daughters had been judged inadequate. Perhaps she herself should have given more lavishly or sacrificed more. 

Then, one day, she saw an "old soldier" (as veterans of war were then called, for it was said that war aged a man), marching through her birch wood.

Therizo peered at him through a seer stone and saw into the labyrinth of a heart --one that was complex, yet brave, honorable, and canny. As she watched, the heart transformed into a noble warrior standing beside her eldest daughter. He placed a ring upon the princess's finger...and as he did so, his uniform turned to cloth-of-gold, and a glittering crown sprouted upon his brow.

There could hardly be a more overt sign. This was the man that she was looking for.

Hastily she stepped onto the path before him. "Stranger," she called out. "Where are you going?"

His answer, when it came, was slow and good-humored. "Well, Grandmother," he said, bowing slightly, "I've a mind to see where the princesses vanish to by night, and why, each dawn, their shoes are in tatters."

"And you are not afraid of dying if you fail?"

The soldier shrugged. "I've offered my life to the king a dozen or more times. What's one more?"

Therizo smiled and began removing her cloak. "Then I have two gifts for you--one a piece of advice and the other a piece of moonlight…"

***

The story of how the soldier discovered the princesses' "enchantment"--and proven that he'd found them in a strange and mysterious world with branches of silver, gold, and diamond and a pearl-encrusted slipper (fallen from the foot of the youngest princess)--was the talk of the kingdom. And now that the king had the secret he had so long coveted, he bestowed the gifts he had promised on the soldier: half the kingdom, and the princess of his choice.

The soldier chose the eldest, which astonished everyone. 

The eldest princess accepted this; she had always known that she would wed to fulfill a pledge or treaty. But two weeks before their wedding, she sent him a servant bearing a note, asking him to meet her in the palace gardens. When he arrived, she beckoned him to a bench and then sat down beside him. "Before we marry," she said firmly, "You need to know why we were dancing in the fairy grotto. For we were not enchanted." And gripping her hands so tightly that it hurt, she told him what the eldest prince had told her over many years: of her father hunting fairies, of the Fairy Queen's attempt to capture him and bring him to heel, of the death of the Fairy Queen's loyal servant, of a grief so terrible that it dared to attempt the impossible.

"Thirteen years our mother strove to free him from death, for the sake of love," she concluded. "And thirteen more years my sisters and I strove to do the same for...oh, I don't know. Kindness? Mercy? Fear of what the Fairy Queen would do if her loyal servant wasn't restored? We _were_ afraid of that. But mostly--"

"Mostly, you couldn't stand by and see injustice done," said the soldier quietly. "And so the twelve of you put your dreams and comforts aside and decided to make things better--at least for one person." 

The eldest princess nodded, not looking at him. "I know it seems foolish…"

"Foolish? Lass, I've been a soldier all my life! If there's anything I know about, it's hard, repetitive work that just might save some lives. Or a few. Or one. I can think of worse training for a queen...and far worse things than a determined, loving wife who'll never betray a confidence or a promise." He gently brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "And I hope--though we scarce know one another yet--that one day I'll win that love. It, like you, seems worth having."

As the princess looked up at him with incredulous joy, a white stag with diamond antlers peered unseen over a rosebush at the two. It whuffled in approval, sliced a good-luck charm into the earth with its antlers, and then wandered through a gate in the air to a birch wood on the other side of the country. It was satisfied.


End file.
